


When we were young and empty

by lettertoelise



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era - sort of, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, But also a hint of SciTech?, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 05:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7030963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettertoelise/pseuds/lettertoelise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma doesn’t believe in soulmates.  But Fitz does.  </p><p> </p><p>Based on the prompt:  When you’re 18 a soul mark appears on your body that matches your soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When we were young and empty

Jemma Simmons doesn’t believe in soulmates.  Mostly.  She knows about soul marks and she knows when she’s 18 hers will appear somewhere on her body, but it will not define her.  

 

Her mother’s soul mark is a tree, leafless and delicate, stamped above her right ankle.  Jemma traces it sometimes, when they’re sprawled out on a blanket in the sun, limbs overlapping.  But her father’s is a horse in mid-gallop, sprinting across his left shoulder.  It is strong, and when Jemma is riding on his back, arms slung around his neck, she presses her face against it and sighs.  

 

Her parents are in the minority.  They don’t match.  Because a keen mind chooses for itself, her mother says.  Jemma sees them, feels their happiness and decides to agree.  

 

***

Fitz wonders about his soulmate sometimes.  Will they be a boy or a girl?  Will their fingers be busy like his?  Always itching to build something up or tear something down?  Will they look at him the way his father looks at his mother, one soul shared between two bodies?  He sees the matching crescent moons on their wrists and smiles.

 

Until his father dies, the cancer slowly eating the life from his body and his mother cries like half of her is missing.   _ Is this what a soulmate is? _ thinks Fitz, and he hopes it’s worth it.  

 

***

It is something she is used to, being different.  The other girls are giggling and braiding each other’s hair, but Jemma is tipped over a microscope, mesmerized by the poetry of bacteria multiplying, and their laughter is just static in her ears.  

 

Sometimes she tries, she goes to sleepovers and kisses boys on a dare.  But she feels false, like she is telling a lie with fingers that long to be teasing test tubes, not painting nails.

 

“I can’t wait to meet my soulmate,” one girl is sighing.  “What about you, Jemma?”

 

“I don’t believe in soulmates,” she replies, and it’s true.  Because how could one person mend the loneliness of a lifetime?

 

“When you turn 18, you’ll see,” another girl says, knowingly, snapping her gum and inspecting herself in the mirror.  Jemma bites her lip to prevent the words from forming on her tongue.

 

_ Some things are inevitable.   _

 

***

 

When you’re fourteen and pasty, being different is dangerous.  Fitz just hides, mostly, willing himself invisible when the bigger boys walk by.  It’s easier if he’s alone, not that anyone is begging to hang with the kid who always carries a set of screwdrivers in his back pocket and stares at anything mechanical like he’s dissecting it.    

 

“I’m worried about you,” his mother says.  Her eyes are sunken, but she smiles at him like he’s all she has left.  He smiles back, her hands frail as they tuck into his.  

 

“It’s okay, mum.  We’ll always have each other.”

 

But Fitz knows that someday he won’t be alone.  His mother’s soul mark has turned into a memory, part of his father that she carries with her always.  A soul mark is a promise.  

 

***

Jemma Simmons is 17, one of the youngest students in S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy history, and she has never had a friend before.  Not one she’d like to keep anyway.  But there is a boy pretending not to see her from across his book and she thinks she might like to try.  It is the same boy who sits in the back of the lecture with headphones stuffed in his ears, the only boy who asks interesting questions - the boy who looks like he might almost be her age.  

 

So she slides in next to him one day, nonchalantly opening her notebook on the table while she sees him visibly gape out of the corner of her eye and he blushes when she introduces herself.  

 

Fitz.  His name is like a challenge, but he eats her sandwiches and finishes her sentences and Jemma thinks this might just be what friendship is.  

 

***

Jemma Simmons is his soulmate.  They’re not old enough for soul marks, but he  _ knows _ .  

 

Of course Fitz had noticed her right away, not only because she was the prettiest girl in the room, but how could he focus when trying to keep up with all the fascinating things she was saying?  When she’d sat next to him, Fitz had been sure it was a fluke.  And then she’d smiled.  That was how he knew.  

 

She is sitting cross legged on his dorm room floor, chin balanced in her palm, looking whimsical.

 

“Fitz?” she asks , and he’s not sure if she’s going to ask him something or tell him something.  “I think we’ve had quite enough studying for one day, don’t you think?”

 

He’s got the laptop open when she plops down beside him, dangling a steaming bag of popcorn by its corner.  The slant of her eyebrows suggests Doctor Who and he couldn’t agree more.  And it’s this - her head on his shoulder, knuckles brushing and legs tangled - it’s how he knows.  

 

***

Jemma Simmons doesn’t believe in soulmates.  But if she did, hers might be Fitz.  

 

Fitz, who leaves a trail of electronics in his wake, who steals her pencils and makes a perfect cup of tea.  Fitz, who sulks when he’s hungry and draws circles in the air with his hands.  Fitz with his ridiculous curls and distracting blue eyes.  He is cranky and clever and he makes her laugh even when she thinks she might cry.        

 

He feels like home.    

 

Her birthday comes first and she is paralyzed when she first wakes up, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling, too frightened to pull herself to the mirror.  But it turns out there is nothing.  Her arms are bare and her legs empty.  Her back is a blank canvas.  Jemma is 18 with no soul mark and she doesn’t know what to do. 

 

Fitz doesn’t ask and so she doesn’t tell him, just accepts the small gift he’s wrapped in monkey wrapping paper and kisses him on the cheek.  It’s a rose pendant on a silver chain, and of course he’s made it, the petals pressed from secondhand wires, and when her eyes flood with tears she pretends it’s happiness.  

 

Because she would have chosen him, it their soul marks had been different.  She would have chosen him like her mother chose her father.  But Fitz, he has always been waiting for his soulmate, and how can she be happy when he belongs to someone else?

***

 

Fitz waits about a week before giving up.  It’s not like he’s had a soul mark before, so at first he thought it was just taking it’s time.  But his skin remains vacant, no promised tether to another.  It’s like he’s been forgotten.  

 

It’s summer and he’s home in Glasgow with letter from Jemma.  Jemma, who was supposed to be his soulmate.  Jemma, the friend he never thought he’d have, the girl with a smile that could outshine the sun.  

 

And honestly, he would choose her anyway, even if their soul marks didn’t match.  He wouldn’t need to know if there were somebody else.  His heart had already decided.      

 

So he stares ruefully at himself in the mirror, and his empty skin, and it seems appropriate somehow.  Because, if he doesn’t belong to Jemma Simmons, he should belong to no one. 

 

***

Jemma is 22 and her arms are full of groceries.  “Fitz!”  She kicks the door, but it takes him a second to arrive.  

 

They work together at Sci-Ops and share a S.H.I.E.L.D. issued apartment.  It’s large, with good light and an excellent view.  But the best part is that they live there together, and he is taking the bags while she kicks off her shoes.  

 

“No peeking!  I got you more of those biscuits you like, but you’ll eat them all at once, and so I’m going to hide them,” she says with a grin.  Of course he peeks anyway.  

 

They’ve never talked about soul marks and she’s never asked.  But Jemma is waiting.  Waiting for the day he finds his match and doesn’t come home.  For the day when her heart breaks.  

 

So she savors him.  Those loud moments when their voices overlap and their volume shakes the windows.  When she pokes his chest with her finger and he mockingly raises the pitch of his voice and her anger burns hot and easy in her cheeks.  Those joyful moments and the sound of his laughter, rattling her bones while she is living for the starlight in his eyes.  And the quiet moments, when they are speaking without words, bodies curving inward toward one another like two opposite poles of a magnet. 

 

These moments are her oxygen in a tank that is running dry and so she breathes carefully.  The time is too sweet to waste.  

 

They are sitting on the living room floor, a jumble of books and notes littering the floor, when her mother calls, and Jemma leaves Fitz with his head dropped listlessly into this palms as she makes for the veranda.  He’s almost solved it, betrayed by the desperate clench of his jaw, and Jemma smiles.

 

“Hello, darling,” her mother croons.  Jemma cradles the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she slides the glass door closed.  It’s always nice to hear her voice.

 

It is an easy conversation, Jemma trying her best to explain their work without giving away any of the details, while her mother fills her with stories of home, and somehow it all seems a little less far away.  

 

“How’s Fitz?” 

 

Jemma peers through the glass to see he is busy scribbling.  “He’s great, actually.  I think he just found inspiration,” Jemma chuckles.  

 

“Jemma, do you remember my friend Cynthia?” he mother asks.  There is a pause.  “Do you know how we met?”

 

“No,” Jemma responds, tilting her head in intrigue as she adjusts the phone against her ear.

 

“We met the year after your father and I started seeing one another.  It was summer, we were walking in the park and I distinctly remember the low back of the dress she was wearing.  And the soulmark on her shoulder was a running horse.”

 

It takes a moment for the words to register.  “Cynthia is Dad’s soulmate?”  

 

“They wanted different things, and well, your father, he wanted me,” her mother continues, “Jemma.  Fitz needs to know all of his choices before he can make the right one.”  

 

Jemma is silent for a while, the information churning in her head.  Her father, at least, had met his soulmate, how could she know if Fitz would make the same choice?  She thought of the pressure of his hand in hers and the constant give and take of their minds - the way together they could make something beautiful.  She thought of his shy smiles and his proud ones, the way his body lit with excitement, his body in perpetual motion from the bounce in his knees to the drumming of his fingers.  And it was the question she’d been asking herself for four years all over again.  Could she afford  _ not _ to tell him?  

 

Maybe 14 year old Jemma was right - some things are inevitable.  

 

***

 

“Jemma, you’ll like this.  I think I’ve got it,” Fitz dives in as she opens the glass door, his arms chasing stray pieces of paper as he struggles to collect his thoughts.  But he looks up and she is somewhere else, not looking at him but through him, and he stops in his tracks.  “Is everything OK?”

 

She nods, raising a hand to her furrowed brow.  Something is bothering her.  She sits down cautiously on the couch, staring at the hands folded neatly on her lap and he scoots up beside her.  There is worry written across her features, in the determined press of her lips and firm set of her shoulders.  He is one move away from wrapping her in his arms when she finally speaks.  

 

“Fitz,” she starts, voice shaky.  “You know, you’ve never told me about your soul mark?  I always thought it might be a lion.”  She is forcing a false cheer into her voice, but her lip is trembling.  He swallows hard.  She is so close to the truth.  

 

“Actually.”  His hand rubs at the back of his neck and he stares at their legs, less than a centimeter apart.  “I don’t have one.”  

 

She is silent and only then does he find the courage to look at her.  Tears are collecting in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill, and she chokes on her words, “You don’t have one?”

 

He nods and she laughs, and she seems almost surprised at the sound.   

 

“Jemma, I never told you, because - it’s just, I didn’t want -” 

 

“I don’t have one either,” she blurts out and his eyes go wide.  She’s laughing again, and she wraps his fingers in hers.  “I knew you wanted a soulmate, and I wanted to let you choose.”

 

“Jemma,” this time, he is cutting her off, cupping her chin in his hand and gently swiping a tear with his thumb.  “I only ever wanted you.”    

 

She is smiling when he kisses her, her lips warm, and she is salty with the taste of her tears.  They are testing one another, a sweep of tongue, a bite on the lip, and as she pulls him in deeper Fitz thinks he finally understands.  He has a soul mark - only, it’s written in his bones.  

**Author's Note:**

> ALL of the thanks to AmandaRex for her wonderful beta work on this and for putting up with me in general :) She's tops. 
> 
> Also - super duper thanks to @doteleven (dot11) for the lovely [banner](http://lettertoelise.tumblr.com/post/145170832150/chapters-11-fandom-agents-of-shield-tv) she made for this piece on tumblr.


End file.
